


The Rabbit and the Woman

by TwinIvoryElephants



Category: Jojo Rabbit (2019)
Genre: Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:06:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24694984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwinIvoryElephants/pseuds/TwinIvoryElephants
Summary: Jojo, now nineteen, visits Elsa at her home in France.
Relationships: Jojo Betzler & Elsa Korr
Comments: 10
Kudos: 72





	The Rabbit and the Woman

Jojo hefted his suitcase over his shoulder as he departed the second train he’d boarded that day. A porter, perhaps noticing his limp and scars, talked in fast French as he attempted to wrestle his luggage from his hands. Jojo, now used to the sort of misguided sympathy, waved him off with a polite, accented “ _Non, merci_ ” and hurried out of the station. His heart beat fast in his chest as he went, blinking in the bright sunlight.

He was just off his first year of university and hadn’t traveled much out of Germany. Elsa teased him about it in her letters, which came less frequently as the years went by. Jojo’s father had sent her off to college in France despite years of Jojo fretting over the potential dangers.

“What if there’s antisemites there?” he brought out desperately when she, at the age of twenty-one, finally finished her high school education; she’d lost time, spending valuable years in hiding while her gentile peers were becoming educated, and complained bitterly to Jojo while studying algebra and Soviet-approved history with classmates four years her junior. 

Elsa just laughed at his fears. “You think I’d be safer here? Don’t be a _dummkopf_ ,” she replied, tousling his hair. Jojo ducked out of her grip, stewing. He hadn’t wanted her to leave.

Now, at the age of nineteen, he had come to terms with her disappearance from his and his father’s lives...mostly. Before going off to university, he sometimes looked somberly at her abandoned bedroom, formerly Inge’s; the walls were still dotted with her artwork, the shelves full of mystery novels and poetry, mostly by Jewish authors. Her bed was neatly made. Jojo used to feel a pang, remembering how Inge had left. His mother, too. It seemed like women couldn’t thrive in their house. No matter how much he loved them, eventually they had to go away. 

Jojo had one of Elsa’s letters in his pocket telling him her new address. He brought it out and looked at it closely, squinting at her spidery, cramped handwriting. She moved frequently, it seemed, from a dorm at university to a townhouse in the city in her junior year, to an apartment in a neighboring town post-graduation. Now, she’d found what she called “a queer little place” a lengthy commute away from the art gallery where she worked.

“It might be a bit cramped for your taste,” the letter teased, “but I love it. It’s the perfect getaway from the world, which has seemed far too busy and loud for me as of late.”

After asking the owner of a pastry shop in halting, heavily accented French where Elsa’s street was, Jojo continued to walk until his legs ached. He’d reached the border between the town’s end and the woods beyond; he stared at the trees in trepidation and awe.

“You live out _here_?” he breathed, fingers tightening around Elsa’s letter. The pastry shop owner had said that her street, Avenue de Boisvert, was at the end of the woods, but he didn’t realize how close it was. He shook his head, forcing himself to walk out of safe civilization and into the forest, among the cool shade of the trees. His shoes half-sunk in the moist, crumbly dark earth of the “street,” which was more like a path the further it wound into the forest; the air smelled thickly of soil and greenery.

He’d read in Elsa’s letter that she lived far away from “polite society,” as she put it, but he figured she was being dramatic. He smiled fondly, remembering her lies to him about the nature of Jews, and later her rapt infatuation with American movie star Clark Gable after watching his films in the cinema. Her letters, too, were full of fanciful turns of phrase, brimming with creativity and romanticism. It was what he loved about her mind, along with her sense of whimsy and biting wit. Just thinking about her in such detail made Jojo’s heart beat fast in anticipation of seeing her again. She hardly sent any pictures of herself, mostly just sketches she’d done of the places she’d been and the people she saw. What did she look like now?

After what seemed like hours, Jojo emerged out of the woods and into a clearing. His mouth dropped; the cottage sitting in the middle of it, walls wreathed in ivy, looked straight out of a fairytale. There was a well at the edge of the path, just where he was standing. He grinned at it in disbelief, then began to run. His heart was banging in his chest. It’d been too long since they’d been together.

Elsa opened the door the minute he arrived, and he barreled in without thinking, arms wide. He crashed into her, and they grasped at each other to steady themselves. “Sorry,” Jojo said, breathless. 

“It’s okay, Jojo,” she replied, grinning. He stared into her beautiful blue eyes and hugged her. She clutched him tight.

“How’s college?” she asked into his shoulder.

“Fine,” he replied.

“Found a major yet?”

“No.”

She released him and shook a finger at him. “ _Dummkopf_ ,” she scolded, still smiling. Her cheeks, now round from years of a steady, healthy diet, were rosy. Her wavy brown hair was cut short, curling prettily around her ears. She was wearing a baggy white shirt speckled with paint and a pair of worn overalls. On her feet, she wore a pair of striped socks, but no shoes. 

“It’s been too long,” said Jojo honestly, not meeting her eye. “I’ve missed you, Elsa. You don’t write as much as you should.” He’d sent her many letters, especially when he was younger. When she did reply, the letters were long, but they never seemed enough. 

Elsa’s smile slackened a bit. “I’m sorry. I know. Is your father worried?”

“No, no. He’s proud of you. I just…” Jojo shrugged. “I miss you.”

Elsa kissed his cheek. “I missed you too,” she admitted. She then took his hand and led him into her house, which was as cozy on the inside as it looked on the outside. A throw a friend from university had given her lay on the overstuffed green sofa. “It came all the way from Israel,” she said, raising her eyebrows. Jojo nodded, impressed.

“No television,” he commented. Instead, at the front of the room was an easel with a half-painted canvas perched on it. 

“No.” Elsa shook her head. “My father loved the radio when we had our old house, according to my mother. He listened to it all the time with his eyes glazed, dead to the world. My mother always hated it. Television seems the same thing, in my eyes. I don’t want to be swayed by it.”

“Do you still go to the cinema?” Jojo hoped so. Elsa used to love the cinema. They went almost every weekend together after a hard day of school.

“Yes. It’s one of the few excuses I have to go into town. I have everything here but my job, and I’ve been slowly planning to sell my art independently.” She gestured to the easel.

She then bustled into the small kitchen to get them some tea. Jojo followed, feeling tall and vaguely awkward. When she put the kettle on, she looked at him and said, “Any girls?”

“What?” Jojo had finally decided to sit at the tiny dining table, but stood up in surprise.

“You can sit down.” Elsa’s eyes were playful. “I only asked if you had any girlfriends.”

“I don’t have time for girlfriends,” Jojo said, blushing. 

She hummed as she got out the tea bags from a cupboard above the sink. “Where have I heard that before?”

“What about you? Have any young men caught the eye of Elsa Sarah Korr?” Jojo challenged. Elsa had several boys trailing after her while she was making up school, but she had rejected them all. They were too young, she told Jojo and his father. Jojo understood the lovesick boys' pain, but, at the time, couldn’t help but feel a little glee that Elsa was so solitary. He couldn’t imagine her having a boyfriend; it was as foreign as her sprouting an extra head.

Now, Jojo knew better. Still, his inquiry was tinged with nervousness that he couldn’t help. He almost wished he hadn’t asked.

Elsa grew solemn. “One,” she said.

Jojo’s heart dropped like a stone to his stomach. “Who?” he asked, shocked.

“An artist whose works were shown at the gallery,” she said, sounding a little sad. “But it never came to be. He went home to Frankfurt soon after arriving.” She turned back to the kettle. “It was silly, anyway. He was a gentile.”

“Oh.” Jojo had wondered if that was also a factor in why Elsa never had any beaus back home, but he hadn’t the courage to ask. It would hurt too much to know.

When the kettle started whistling, Elsa took it off the burner and poured their tea. It was earl gray, a favorite of hers. Jojo preferred oolong, as did his father. “It must be nice to buy any sort of tea you like, living without Father and I,” he said lightly as she seeped the tea bags. 

“Of course it’s nice,” she replied. “But it also gets lonely. I’ve been thinking of getting a cat.”

“What about a roommate?” Jojo wondered if he could transfer to some French university nearby. His father would miss him, but maybe he could move to France, too. They could all be together again. His heart leapt to his throat. 

“No,” said Elsa simply. “I like my space. I lived in the city for years with roommates with all the art and culture I could handle. Now, I just want solitude. I want to work on my own art instead of hawking others’.” She placed the steaming cup in front of Jojo and sat down across from him at the table.

“What have you been painting?”

Elsa smiled in a secret way. “You’ll see,” she said, patting his hand.

They drank their tea and talked. Jojo told her that she’d taken art classes at university. “I read that in your letter!” Elsa exclaimed. “Draw something for me!”

Jojo grinned, fetched a nub of a pencil out of his pocket, and drew on the back of her letter. After a few minutes, he showed her his sketch. It was of a wobbly, long-eared rabbit and a woman sitting at a table together, having tea.

Elsa wiggled her eyebrows upon seeing his sketch. “Who are these handsome creatures?” She took his drawing from his hands. Slowly, she smiled. “The level of detail is impressive! I love the shading inside the rabbit’s ears...still, after all these years, there’s whimsy to it, in the lines you draw. It's almost childish, but more…” She struggled to find the words. “There’s poignancy to it. Beauty.”

Jojo could feel red creeping up his neck.

I’ll keep this in my private gallery,” Elsa said finally, looking up at him. “Thank you, Jojo.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” he said. “It’s just something silly.”

“No, no. It’s wonderful. It came from you.” 

After they finished their tea, Elsa brought Jojo into the room beside the living room, which was her bedroom. Beside the tiny cot that she slept in, there was another easel and two stuffed bookshelves. “While riding the bus to work,” she said, “I think about what I want to paint next, and I draw it in this notepad.” She grabbed a tiny black notepad off her bedside table and handed it to her guest. Jojo flipped through it, admiring.

“I will do your rabbit and woman next.” She placed his drawing on her empty easel, almost delicately. 

It was then that Elsa showed Jojo what she was working on: a painting of their house back in Germany. In the window, a girl with a faintly hooked nose and a scarred, curly-haired blonde boy read books. In another, a man and a red-haired woman wearing sumptuous clothes danced. In the highest window, another girl, this one in dark braids, played a violin.

“It’s all of us,” Jojo said. “You and me, Mama, Father, Inge.” He could feel his eyes growing wet. “Elsa, it’s wonderful.”

Elsa flushed, pleased. Then, as she looked at her painting, she grew somber, almost shy. “I wanted to commemorate us,” she said. “I wanted to take a picture of us when we were young. Innocent.”

She looked at Jojo, eyes sad. “‘Can you imagine if we had met when things were different?’ That’s what I thought when I was hiding in your house, when I was getting to know you. I wanted to bring that wish out again, just to flush it out of my system completely. Get rid of such childish things.”

Jojo nodded, swallowing a lump in his throat. He stared at the small painted Rosie, her eyes laughing, her red lips smiling.

“I wanted to focus on the good things,” Elsa said. “I’ve focused on the bad so many times.” Jojo had caught sight of the other paintings tucked beside the bookshelf. A pile of shoes. Greasy black smoke billowing from smokestacks. Ghosts in striped uniforms wearing stars on their right breasts, slack-jawed and gaunt. All parts of a horrible whole, one Elsa shied away from. “I can never draw the whole thing,” she told him later at a café, not touching the _hamantasch_ sitting on her saucer. Jojo swallowed a bite of his own pastry, immediately turning somber. 

It had been bad when Elsa found out where the Jews went. Jojo had been affected, too, had realized just how horrible his world truly was until meeting her, but it was Elsa who suffered the most. She’d lashed out at him, at his father once he arrived, had refused to eat. She’d wept and bawled, curled up in the attic, alone, refusing any comfort.

He didn’t want to think about those dark, horrible months now. Now, Elsa was thriving, becoming a true artist. She was living her dream in France. She was refusing to wither away.

“I can never face it,” she said quietly. “I should. I need to. I was one of the lucky ones.” Jojo took her hand. A tear plopped on the rim of her saucer; her fingers curled around his, warm and soft. 

“You’re doing well,” he told her, uncertain, awkward. “You’re healing.”

Elsa sniffed. “Maybe I shouldn’t be.”

“Don’t say that.” Jojo squeezed her hand. “It isn’t fair to you.” They’d gone over this multiple times over the years; the guilt Elsa felt seemed to come back like clockwork every Purim or Yom Kippur, holidays she celebrated with fierce intensity and reverence. Jojo wondered if she’d ever stop feeling that guilt, that unimaginable grief. 

_No,_ he thought, seeing the expression on her face, the haunted look in her eyes. _I don’t think she will._

“Let’s talk about the future,” proclaimed Elsa after a moment of silence, wiping her eyes. “Not the past.”

“Right,” said Jojo.

“Tell me about your friends, your other classes.” As he spoke, she began to eat her _hamantasch_ at last in small, nibbling bites.

He told her, watched her eyes light up at mentions of his roommate, a slovenly half-American boy named Albert. He told her of his professors, who it seemed were kind or nasty depending on what day of the week it was. She laughed at his stories, teased him about any female classmates he happened to mention. Jojo felt his spirits rise, hearing her laugh. It was beautiful. He would never tire of it. 

That evening, they went to the cinema. A romance. Jojo had no interest in romances, found them soppy and embarrassing, but Elsa squeezed his hand the moment the heroine lost her lover at sea, whispered in his ear to translate and make comments.

“When are they going to kiss already?” she groused loudly in his ear. Jojo struggled to stifle his laughter. The heroine and her love interest were bickering endlessly on the screen in rapid-fire French. “Don’t worry, Jojo," she assured him, "they’re not saying anything interesting, the _yutzes_.”

Several people shushed them. Elsa stuck her tongue out at them. Jojo felt his heart swell with affection. He put his arm around her and held her close. “Watch yourself, Jojo,” Elsa warned him, half-affectionate and half-genuine.

“I know,” he assured her. “Don’t worry. I just love you.” He swallowed thickly. “And...I’ve missed you so.” _More than I can express._

She leaned into the crook of his shoulder. 

“I’ve missed you, too, _meeskait_.”


End file.
